In-flight entertainment (IFE) systems have been deployed onboard aircraft to provide entertainment for passengers in a passenger cabin. The in-flight entertainment systems typically provide passengers with, movies, television, and audio entertainment programming.
Updating content files in IFE systems can require a large amount of data to be transferred between ground based content servers and aircraft based content servers. In an upload direction, movie and television programs, weather reports, news reports, electronic publications and other content can be amongst the types of content that must be transferred from a ground based content server to an aircraft's on-board content server. In the download direction, it is desirable to transfer content generated during the flight, including IFE usage statistics, food inventory reports, product inventory reports, and electronic systems health monitoring reports from the aircraft based content server to the ground based content server upon each arrival of the aircraft to an airport terminal.
For an aircraft equipped with a wireless data communication subsystem, some content files can be uploaded or downloaded through wireless data links during flight or upon arrival at an airport. Wireless ground data links can be installed at airports but the cost of deployment and maintenance can be prohibitively expensive. For these and other reasons many airports around the world do not have wireless ground data link systems or have systems that provide insufficient communication bandwidth to enable completion of large content file transfers while an aircraft remains at the airports between flights. Moreover, the per-megabyte usage cost of subscriber-based ground and satellite data links, e.g., licensed cellular/satellite based systems, can be prohibitively expensive to use for many types of large content file transfers.